


Night Travelers Are Full of Light

by Mosca



Category: And Then We Danced (2019)
Genre: Getting Back Together, Homophobia, Immigration & Emigration, Language Barrier, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23707381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Merab and Irakli get out of Georgia and take the long road to finding each other again.
Relationships: Irakli/Merab
Comments: 21
Kudos: 69





	Night Travelers Are Full of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Lovessong and I watched this amazing movie together, and then she graciously beta read after I had written the fix-it reunion fic that I needed afterward.
> 
> MAJOR CONTENT WARNING for canon-consistent homophobic violence and frank, but not overly graphic, depiction of mental and physical recovery.
> 
> This story also contains brief emotional and sexual relationships with OMCs, extensive evidence that the author is a language nerd, food porn, tourism porn, and porn porn.
> 
> The title is from "Search the Darkness" by Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminski. The fragment of "Ciudad sin sueño" by Federico Garcia Lorca is my own translation.

1\. 

Merab never finds out where David got the money to send him away. Sopo has an aunt in Madrid, David explains; she owns a restaurant and has pulled strings to get Merab a work visa. Merab knows all this for two months before he leaves, and every so often, he produces a document. Once, he has to go to the Spanish consulate. David and the rest of Merab’s family pretend that none of this is happening, that Merab will stay in Tbilisi forever, that nothing will change.

One morning, without warning or fanfare, David sends Merab an airplane ticket on his phone. His flight will leave the day after tomorrow. Merab packs immediately, one modest bag of clothes and keepsakes, the passport he acquired in a fit of optimism the first time he thought he might make the dance troupe. After he zips up the bag, he looks up Madrid on his phone, almost as far west as a person can go in Europe without falling into the ocean. 

Merab has only left Georgia once, to dance at a festival in Turkey with his children’s troupe. After tomorrow, he might never see it again.

He spends his last day in Tbilisi with his family, eating and dancing. Mary hugs him and can’t let go, crying. He promises she’ll be the first person he sends his new phone number. “Listen,” she says. “Don’t tell your family I gave you this. I collected from the other girls, even some of the boys in the troupe. Maybe it’s enough for a new phone.” She presses an envelope of money into his hand.

“Or some good cigarettes?” Merab teases.

“I can dream,” Mary says, managing to laugh.

At the airport, Merab has to pretend he’s not terrified. If anyone asks, he’s going to Madrid to work in his aunt’s restaurant. But nobody asks. They just match his face to his passport photo and wish him a pleasant flight. 

It’s not pleasant. His ears ache, and his stomach churns. He tries to listen to Spanish language lessons on his phone, but he can’t focus on the cheerful voice repeating jumbles of hushed, alien consonants. Briefly, he covers his face with his shirt and cries into it. The flight attendant asks if he’s okay, and Merab lies that he’s suffering from motion sickness. The flight attendant lifts one of Merab’s hands, palm up, and presses two manicured fingers into his wrist, where the tendons meet the heel of his hand. “It’s an acupressure point,” she explains. When she moves on to the next passenger, Merab digs his nails into his wrist until he breaks the skin.

He has to make a connection through Munich, the airport a huge and bright building like nowhere he has seen. There’s only one Georgian interpreter in the customs area, and she’s overwhelmed, so Merab muddles through dimly remembered fragments of high school Russian. He and the customs agent are both messing up the grammar, and they share the unique laughter of strangers who connect for a moment and never meet again. 

Sopo’s Aunt Keti meets Merab at the baggage claim in Madrid with a handwritten sign that says “Welcome Home Merab!” in Georgian. When he makes eye contact, she runs toward him like she’s known him all his life. She’s exactly what he expected, round-bellied and gap-toothed, but at the same time somehow glamorous, with her highlighted hair and her makeup just so. 

They take the Metro from the airport to Aunt Keti’s neighborhood. The trains zoom like dragons underneath Madrid, packed not just with people but with music and smells. Merab thinks he could feel at home here, riding the trains all day, watching passengers come and go. While they ride, Aunt Keti tells Merab that he’s her nephew now, no need to go into the details. She asks about his kitchen experience, and he shakes his head - he was a waiter, not a cook. “Well, you’ll learn. You’ll be the only one in the kitchen who’s tasted _chakapuli_ made by his own grandmother.” 

Merab makes a sour face. “That might not be much to go by.” 

Aunt Keti kisses his cheek and doesn’t say why. 

He assumed she would live above her restaurant, but her house is in a different neighborhood from her business, a narrow and cheery blue building among a block of colorful row houses squeezed together. She says he can stay in her spare bedroom as long as he wants. The room is very feminine, with the walls painted pink and flowers stenciled on the bureau. It’s the first time Merab has had a whole room to himself. Aunt Keti asks if he wants to get some rest, but he’s hungry and full of energy. She takes him to a cafe down the street and negotiates with the waiter in rapid Spanish. A bottle of red wine arrives, and then one small dish after another. Aunt Keti describes the ingredients and history of each dish in exhaustive and sensual detail. When Merab finally protests that he’s stuffed, she says, “Well, I can’t teach you all of Spanish cuisine in a day.” 

“I guess I’ll have to stay a while,” Merab says, and Aunt Keti beams like she did when she kissed him on the train. He’s still wired with energy, so she takes him on a tour of the neighborhood, stopping for errands like changing his money for euros. The envelope from Mary contains more than Merab could have imagined. When they go to buy a SIM card, he ends up with a whole new phone. 

The next morning, he starts working at the restaurant, which serves Georgian and Turkish food in a trendy neighborhood. Aunt Keti starts him at the bottom, washing dishes and doing whatever other menial tasks the other kitchen staff pass off to him. He works from noon until midnight, his hands raw from dishwater, back aching from hauling trash out and boxes of food in. But he’s surrounded all day with beautiful smells that remind him of home. When the kitchen gets quiet, the line cooks teach him how to cut vegetables and trim meat. With the same discipline he used to apply to dancing, Merab practices knife skills on his days off.

He joins a Spanish language class for new arrivals. It meets at nine in the morning, and most of the students work in restaurants or do other kinds of evening shift work. He falls unthinkingly into friendship with a group of four other students. On the mornings when they don’t have class, they meet at a cafe, drinking coffee together for hours and trying to speak Spanish. Practicing conversation means not being lonely. 

He still dances every day, for fun, in the patch of garden behind Aunt Keti’s house. He still imagines himself dancing with Irakli. He has his own room, so he can jerk off alone. 

One of the line cooks quits, and Merab gets promoted. He and his friends graduate from the beginning Spanish class and move up together to Low Intermediate. They coordinate their nights off so they can go out to celebrate. One of the stops on their journey is a gay bar. Merab blushes, and his friend (Mateja, the one with no filter) nudges him and says, “Go on. You need a boyfriend.” 

He doesn’t find one that night, but he goes to the same bar a few days later after work. It buzzes with one-AM energy, and all the boys are looking at him. He doesn’t need much Spanish to make a friend for the night. Some of them stick around for a week or two, but he doesn’t feel the way about them that he did about Irakli. Despairingly, he tells Mateja about the boys who come and go, and she says, “You’re young and pretty. So just have sex and don’t worry.”

“Worry _yourself,_ ” he corrects her. “Remember? We just studied reflexive verbs.”

She rolls her eyes. “I mean it. A boyfriend is too much trouble.” Mateja pours out her heart, describing her boyfriend who sleeps all day and sells drugs out of their apartment. They don’t have sex anymore, and she’s afraid of getting sent back to Slovenia if he’s arrested. But she can’t pay her rent if she kicks him out.

“I was thinking about moving out of my aunt’s house.” Merab had not thought about this for one moment before now.

He thought Aunt Keti would be upset, but instead she hugs him and says it’s time he had his own life. He promises to visit every day. “You’d better, if you want your paycheck,” Aunt Keti teases.

Merab’s apartment with Mateja is small and a little run-down, but he doesn’t have to sneak around when he brings boys home. When he doesn’t have a guest for the night, he dances in the living room. Sometimes he substitutes pop songs for traditional Georgian music, but he keeps up his technique.

The kitchen is all his, when he has time to practice. He finds recipes on the internet and makes Slovenian potato dumplings for Mateja’s birthday. When Aunt Keti hears about the dumplings, he has to make them for her, too. “Hmm,” Aunt Keti says. “Play with these. Add some spices, maybe a little cheese. And then -” She pauses for drama. “And then we put them on the menu as a special.”

Days and months go by. Merab has a boyfriend for a little while; the rush of infatuation dies out fast, but he loves the feeling while it lasts, of having his world revolve around their next kiss. Before he knows it, he’s lived in Spain for two years. Before he knows it, Madrid is his home, and Tbilisi seems imaginary, a dreamscape that dissolves when he wakes up.

Merab comes home just before dawn on a Saturday morning. He went out dancing after work and hooked up, but he decided not to stay the night. There’s no Spanish class on Saturdays, so he can sleep in before work. But his body is still buzzing with energy. He pulls out his phone to scroll through nonsense until he can drift off. 

He has a new friend request. It looks like a joke at first, but he follows the trail of photos and linked social media accounts. His finger hovers over the “accept” button, but he ends up closing the app and going to sleep. It will probably be gone when he wakes up. He’s probably dreaming already.

2.

Irakli goes back to Batumi. He cares for his father, plans his wedding, teaches dance classes to little kids so he has some cash. There’s plenty of construction work around, his family keeps telling him, but he’d rather make a living doing literally anything else. He doesn’t want to grow old before he’s thirty. He doesn’t want to grow old at all.

The more he tries not to think about Merab, the more his mind wanders back. When he closes his eyes, he replays the last time they saw each other, Merab’s whole body crumbling in heartbreak. In the shower, Irakli remembers Merab’s mouth on his cock, that warm and peaceful night, and he leans back against the tile to jerk off. He tries to picture his fiancee instead, but Lia’s lips have never had the same roughness, the same hunger.

Irakli’s father takes another turn for the worse. Irakli sits at his bedside, slowly feeding him soup, holding his head so he doesn’t spit it back up. “So,” Irakli’s father says. “Tell me about the girl.”

“What girl? Lia? You’ve known her since we were kids.”

“Not Lia,” his father says. “The other girl. In Tbilisi.”

Irakli laughs, feeling almost honest. “There was no girl.”

“Come on, son. I promise I’ll take it to the grave.”

Irakli stays silent for several minutes, but the secret bubbles over. “There was a boy. In Tbilisi. We fell in love.”

His father swings out a feeble arm, aiming for Irakli’s face but instead sending the soup bowl splashing to the floor. “Get out. Get out and never come back.”

Irakli tries to return to his father’s room the next day, but his father refuses to see him. His mother comforts him, says it’s the illness talking, and his father will come around. A week later, his father dies. They never speak again. 

At the funeral, Irakli feels like everyone is staring at him. He tries to shake it off, because everyone is pleasant, expressing their condolences. After the funeral meal, Irakli goes outside for a smoke. His cousin follows him and asks if he can bum a cigarette. As Irakli reaches into his pocket, his cousin punches him in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. Out of nowhere, relatives and friends surround Irakli, punching and kicking. There’s blood in his mouth and his eyes. Someone stomps, and he hears a crack, as pain shoots up from his shin. Irakli tries to curl into a ball and protect his face. He doesn’t scream or fight back. He knows what this is about. Maybe he deserves it. 

Through the haze of pain and blood, Irakli hears a woman shout “Stop!” The attack disperses. He forms dim memories of an ambulance ride, but they give him something for the pain that puts him to sleep. The next thing he knows, he’s in a hospital bed, immobile, high on painkillers. The doctors are chilly toward him and ignore his questions. None of his family come to visit, but Lia drops by, decent enough to tell him in person that the engagement is off. 

After a few strange, floating days in the hospital, one of the nurses kneels by his bed. “I know someone who can help you,” she says. “Should I contact him for you?” It could be someone from the Church trying to cure him of his sin, or someone who will smuggle in a gun and finish the job. But Irakli takes the chance that someone will rescue him.

The next day, a man visits him. A hoodie and scarf cover most of his face. “This is a bus ticket,” he says, tucking a document under Irakli’s arm. “Tomorrow night, the nurse will check you out of the hospital and take you to the bus station. You’ll get more instructions from there. Do you understand?” Irakli nods, but before he can ask questions, the man is gone.

As promised, the nurse discharges him from the hospital the next evening. He can’t walk, so she supplies him with crutches, as well as a stash of bandages and disinfectant. “I can’t give you anything stronger than Tylenol, or they’ll confiscate it at the border,” she says. She guides him to a car waiting outside. On the seat, there’s a backpack with a note pinned to it. The note is from Lia. _Your mother packed up a few of your things for you. She says she put in your passport and birth certificate, some money, and snacks. We couldn’t find your phone, so I got you a cheap one with an international SIM card. Your mom would take you back in, but she’s afraid of what will happen if she tries to see you. She loves you, and so do I, in spite of everything._

The driver leaves Irakli at the bus station without a word. A woman helps Irakli to his feet. “Stay on the bus all the way to Istanbul, which is the end of the line. Someone will meet you at the bus depot there. They’ll wear a green hat.”

The bus ride to Istanbul takes almost a full day. Irakli does his best to stay awake, worried his backpack might be stolen, but he dozes on top of it instead. When he opens it, everything is still there, including a wrapped pastry from his mom, which he eats ravenously even though his mouth bleeds when he bites into it. It feels like a few of his teeth are missing. He doesn’t want to think about how he looks. The bus rumbles along the Turkish coastal highway. The Black Sea looks pure and kind, like it wants Irakli to jump into it. It’s a good thing his leg is broken, and he can’t jump anywhere.

In Istanbul, he hobbles off the bus and immediately sees a young woman in a green baseball cap. She waves like she knows him well, then gives him a gingerly hug. “I’m Dana,” she says. “You speak English?”

“A little.” Whatever he remembers from high school.

“I’m going to Sofia by bus,” she says, slowly enough that he can understand. “Do you want to go with me?”

“Yes, please,” Irakli says.

“Good, I already have a ticket for you.” From a distance, they look like a couple, which Irakli is sure is the point. They find seats together on the bus to Sofia. She checks his injuries and changes his bandages as meticulously as she can in the cramped space, and he suspects she’s a nurse. Then, she lays out a small feast: bean and vegetable soup still warm in a Thermos, potato salad, mashed eggplant, yogurt with honey. They chat in broken English, looking up the words they don’t know on her phone. They talk about movies, music, funny animal videos on YouTube, anything but what happened to him. In the middle of their trip, somewhere in the Bulgarian countryside, Dana turns serious. “In Sofia, you will see a person in a scarf with flowers. They will have more instructions for you.”

“Okay,” Irakli says.

“I will put my number in your phone,” she says. “When you get to.. home, please tell me you’re okay.” Irakli gets out the phone that Lia bought him and turns it on. “Oh, it’s a new one,” Dana says. “Good idea.” She saves her name and number in the Contacts app. “I’m your number one new friend.”

Dana hugs him goodbye in Sofia. He finds a girl in a blue flowered scarf, who hands him a ticket to Budapest and disappears. He sleeps through nine hours of Serbia and Hungary, clutching his backpack to his chest. The good thing about looking like a vagrant is that nobody thinks he has anything to steal. 

His contact in Budapest is a man in a yellow jacket, who gives him a ticket to Prague. “Hey, where are you going?” the guy shouts in English when Irakli hobbles away from the buses, toward the shopping area of the station. 

“Bathroom,” Irakli says. “And some food.”

“I help you,” the guy says. He’s brusque, but there’s kindness beneath it. “Don’t buy something here. I buy for you.” Using the bathroom takes a while, and by the time Irakli is out, the guy is back with two bags: soup and coffee for now, a yogurt drink and a chocolate bar for later. 

On the bus to Prague, Irakli sucks on his chocolate and turns on his new phone. This bus is a really nice one, with charging outlets between the seats, so he can entertain himself for the whole ride. He switches everything in his phone to English. 

In Prague, he looks for a woman in a dinosaur t-shirt. By now, he knows the routine, and when he spots her, he waves like she’s an old friend. She has bright pink hair and tattooed arms; the dinosaur shirt is the least noticeable thing about her. When he reaches her, she lifts his bag off his shoulder. “Irakli? I’m Iveta. Let’s go.” 

They drive to a hilly neighborhood of old stone buildings with arching windows. “Is this the end?” Irakli asks. “My home?”

“Yes, if everything goes well,” Iveta says. She explains - with some repetition and a few pauses to hunt for words in his phone’s translation app - that she and her husband will host him in their home while he applies for asylum. The system is very backed up; it could take a year or more. Iveta assures him that they’re happy to have him for as long as it takes. They’re volunteers for an organization that helps gay and transgender people get out of countries that are dangerous for them. 

Asylum. He’s a refugee. It sounds strange. He just feels like a normal person, from a country that never seemed dangerous before.

Irakli has a couple of weeks to file the asylum papers, so Iveta and her husband, Jiří, give him a few days to sleep off his journey. They also take him to a doctor and a dentist, because it might be more difficult for him to get medical care after he applies for asylum. His face is healing and looks almost normal. He hasn’t shaved since he left - it hurts too much - and he decides to keep the beard. It’s like a disguise, a secret identity. 

On a Monday morning, the dentist puts in an implant to replace Irakli’s lost teeth, and that afternoon, he goes with Iveta to the immigration lawyer. There are a million rules for an asylum applicant, like being under house arrest. He’s not allowed to work, even on a volunteer basis. Technically, he’s permitted to travel throughout the Czech Republic, but he’s better off staying in Prague if possible. He can’t drive, open a bank account, or enroll in a university. The rescue organization is helping with his medical care, but he won’t have full access to the health system. “What _can_ I do?” Irakli asks.

“Not much,” the lawyer says. “I can help you sign up for a refugee education program, to learn Czech language and culture. Beyond that… wait, and stay out of trouble.”

For a few weeks, while his leg heals, Irakli follows the lawyer’s orders to the letter, because he can’t do much else. His room is a converted attic with its own small bathroom, a godsend because he can’t get down the stairs by himself. Iveta and Jiří’s twelve-year-old daughter, Lucie, brings up his meals. One evening, she arrives with a picnic blanket and both of her younger brothers, and it becomes ritual after that, the whole family congregating on the floor for dinner until Irakli gets his cast removed. 

Once he can walk, Irakli starts to attend the refugee classes. It’s immediately clear that nobody else in the class is like him. The rest are from Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo - the places he thinks of as “dangerous countries.” They all have classmates who speak their language and know their culture. Even the teacher isn’t on his side; when he greets her with the halting Czech phrases that Lucie taught him for his first day of school, she sighs and points him to an empty seat. He doesn’t tell anyone why he had to leave Georgia - they wouldn’t understand him anyway - but his classmates find out somehow. Maybe the teacher, who speaks Arabic, figures it out and tips them off. After his third day of class, a group of men corners him outside the building. One pushes him against a wall, and the rest take turns spitting in his face. Irakli doesn’t know what they’re yelling at him, but he gets the picture. His mouth fills with the taste of phantom blood, and the crack of his leg breaking plays in his brain. He steels himself for a beating, but the men walk away chanting an incomprehensible slur. They’ve made their point.

When he gets home, he can’t bring himself to tell Iveta and Jiří what happened. He stares at his phone and remembers that Dana’s number is in it. It’s been over a month, and he never let her know he was okay. He texts her an apology, and her reply is mostly exclamation points and happy emojis. He asks if it’s okay to tell her where he wound up, and she says it’s fine. He tells her all the good things about Prague before he gets to what happened in class. She writes, _You have lawyer? Call this lawyer, or send email. Give all these details of your story._ He thanks her and follows her advice. When the lawyer calls him back, she says she’s relieved, that he could have had his application revoked if he’d stopped showing up to class without a reason.

Irakli summons his courage and goes to the LGBTQ community center that his lawyer has referred him to. They’ve found a college kid to tutor him in Czech language and citizenship. The receptionist offers him free mental health services, too, and it doesn’t sound like declining is an option. Czech people are like that, direct and decisive. 

Irakli’s tutor is gorgeous. Lukáš is tall and slim, with blond hair that fans out like a parakeet’s crest and lips slightly too big for his face. With Merab, Irakli almost convinced himself that it was about him specifically and not about boys in general, but his heart flutters every time he sits down for a language lesson. Irakli can’t help flirting, and Lukáš flirts right back. Finally, Irakli invites Lukáš out for a beer after their lesson, and it ends with a kiss in the alley behind the bar. Irakli gets a new tutor, a high-femme lesbian named Tereza with a wardrobe of polka-dot dresses. He practices other things with Lukáš.

Back at home, Irakli keeps himself busy by cleaning the house, making minor repairs, and sometimes looking after the two younger boys so Lucie can go to volleyball practice after school. Iveta and Jiří tell him he’s an angel for helping out, but they never suggest that he stop. One day, a neighbor from down the street comes by to ask if he can help her install her new kitchen cabinets. It takes all day, and when he’s finished, she slips him a handful of cash. He tries to explain that he’s not allowed to accept it, but she insists it’s a gift, not payment. After that, word gets around, and Irakli becomes the neighborhood handyman. They’ve even agreed on an hourly rate for his “gifts.” Every once in a while, someone stiffs him on a gift, and he overhears one older couple gossiping in Czech that they don’t understand how Iveta and Jiří can leave a (new vocabulary word) like him alone with their sons. But people are friendly and generous for the most part, and he’s glad to have something better to do with his time than watch cute animals on YouTube.

Sometimes Irakli forgets that he’s waiting to see if he has a future, because each individual day seems so normal. Someday soon, without warning, he’ll hear whether a panel of strangers has decided to let him stay in their country or send him home to die. But today is his birthday, and his host family have thrown him a party in the backyard. They’ve not only gotten Lukáš to invite all his friends from the LGBTQ community center, but Dana has come up from Sofia to surprise him. If it’s the last birthday of his life, he’ll celebrate it with cake and dancing.

Nothing happens for months and months, and then everything seems to happen at once. Irakli’s lawyer calls to tell him that his asylum application is up for active review, which sets off a chain of tasks that seem designed for him to fail. Go to this building at exactly the appointed time, with exactly these papers. Nobody can tell him anything about his status, and the Czech are less than generous with reassuring smiles. Except for Lukáš, who buys him beer and kisses him, saying, “They have to let you stay, because you’re too beautiful to send away.”

Lukáš graduates from university in the spring and gets a dream job offer in Vienna. He wants to try to stay together, but Irakli knows the distance is too far. They share one last drunk, sexy, romantic weekend before parting as friends.

Less than a week later, Irakli’s lawyer calls again. He needs to come to her office as soon as possible. He should bring his papers and a friend, if he wants. Iveta and Jiří are at work, so Irakli goes to the LGBTQ community center. The receptionist - more of a drinking acquaintance than a real friend, but maybe that’s just changed - gets someone to cover his desk. The lawyer hands Irakli an envelope, and he takes out the small stack of papers folded inside. He tries to read the Czech first, but the grammar is too complicated, so he switches to the English printed below, reading each word out loud slowly to make sure it’s real. The letter is full of conditions and next steps, but the important sentence is the first one: _Your application for asylum protection has been approved._

Irakli drops to the floor, crying. “I can stay,” he says, over and over, because he can’t think of anything else. He gets to have a life. It’s nothing special, but it’s his. 

3.

Merab oversleeps, which is good because he’s burned off most of his hangover but bad because he has to rush to get to work on time for prep. When he’s out of the shower, dressed and shaved, he finds Mateja in their kitchen, making coffee. Slovenians and Georgians make coffee the same way, on the stove with sugar until it’s thick, _properly._ “Are there pastries left?” he asks.

“From yesterday,” she says over her shoulder.

“It’s fine, I’m late, I’ll soak it in the coffee,” he says.

“Five minutes,” Mateja says. “Go fix your hair.” Merab’s hair is beyond fixing, but by the time he’s given up, Mateja has poured coffee into a travel mug for him and wrapped one of the stale pastries in foil. He runs to the Metro station and eats his breakfast on the platform. Coffee and pastry at 11:30 isn’t strange in Spain, even for people who work normal hours. The Metro is running late, as expected, because there’s scheduled maintenance on weekends, and because everything in Spain runs at its own pace, like the clock is a vague suggestion. The kitchen staff are more likely to notice if he’s early than if he’s late. But he has to supervise prep today, and they won’t be ready for the late afternoon rush if everyone stands around smoking until half past twelve. 

Finally on the train, Merab remembers his friend request from last night. Part of him wants to dismiss the request. Chances are, he’ll just have his heart broken one more time. But he’s overwhelmed with the desire to know that Irakli is safe and happy, somewhere in the world. He accepts the request, then stares at Irakli’s profile picture for the rest of his ride. Irakli has let his beard grow in, but he trims it neatly, like the hero in an action movie. His nose looks crooked, like it’s healed from being broken. He looks like a different person than the boy Merab fell in love with two years ago, and he looks exactly the same.

Merab’s stop comes up before he can think of what to say to Irakli. He shoves his phone in his pocket and thinks about nothing but work until two in the morning. It’s a beautiful day that turns into an even more beautiful evening, and the restaurant is packed. Usually, the staff goes out for a glass of wine after a day when the restaurant makes this much money, but tonight, they all make excuses. 

The Metro is nearly empty, and Merab’s phone is full of messages. Most of them are ships that sailed away hours ago. Mateja texting to ask where the scissors are, and then texting again to say never mind, she found them. A booty call from a boy he shouldn’t have given his number to last week. Drag queen photos from a fellow regular at his favorite bar, along with “Sorry you missed it! Fuck your job!”

And one message from Irakli. It’s long, and the words swim in the searing fluorescent light of the Metro, especially since he’s written it in Georgian but with the Western alphabet. Merab saves it for when he gets home. Once he’s curled in bed in his underwear with the box fan blasting cool air through his window, he opens Irakli’s message again. _I’m sorry I disappeared from your life for so long,_ it begins. _I made some bad decisions, and then it wasn’t safe to contact you. I will understand if you never reply to this message and move on with your life. I hope you’ve met a lovely boy who’s better than me, and you have no use for me anymore. But there are people from my past who have hurt me and will never apologize, and I don’t want to be a person like that in your life._

The rest of the message tells the story of a journey similar to Merab’s and totally different. Irakli says his family found out about Merab and rejected him, and Merab infers that Irakli is leaving out most of the details there. Irakli has made his way to Prague, and after a year and a half, he got his residency approved. Merab knows from his Spanish class friends that Irakli is smoothing over the truth there, too: you don’t stay in Europe for eighteen months without a visa unless you’re here as a refugee. Merab has heard of gay people getting into Europe that way, or at least trying, but it’s hard to imagine someone he knows going through it. He remembers how lucky he is to have a family who stood by him. He’s been afraid, but he’s never been alone like Irakli was.

He starts writing a message, and soon, what he’s written is as long as what Irakli sent. He tells Irakli all about Madrid, about the restaurant and his little apartment, his friends from language class and from the bar, Aunt Keti and Mateja, Spanish boys and Spanish wine. He finishes with, _I’ve met a lot of boys here, but I haven’t felt the same way about any of them as I felt about you. Maybe it really is because the first time is special. But I think you’re special to me, too. I’d like to be friends again and see what happens next._ When Merab finishes writing, he almost deletes the whole message. But he’s sober, and the middle of the night is when he thinks most clearly. He presses the send button and goes to sleep.

When he wakes up, there’s another message waiting for him. It’s a Sunday, so they both have nothing better to do than drink coffee and text all afternoon. They talk about everyday things, their friends and their lives. Maybe they are the same people they were when they met, after all. Maybe they’ve traveled back in time together. By the time Irakli has to put his phone down and meet some friends for dinner, Merab has fallen back in love with him again.

They text every day after that, usually a quick hello, sometimes a photo or a meme. The texts make Irakli seem so nearby that Merab keeps expecting him to appear around the corner so Merab can jump into his arms. Merab tries to keep their rekindled relationship to himself, in case anything goes wrong, but his bar friends catch him grinning at his phone and hound him about his secret boyfriend until he tells them everything. Merab expects to be teased, but his friends say it’s the most romantic thing they’ve ever heard.

Merab and Irakli figure out a time for a video chat. Irakli’s voice shakes when he sees Merab’s face. He says it’s because he hasn’t spoken Georgian in so long - he even dreams in English and Czech now - but they’re both crumbling under the weight of their emotions. Or something else. They manage five or ten minutes of casual conversation before they’re trading elaborate descriptions of what they want to do to each other. Merab takes off his shirt and holds his phone at arm’s length so Irakli can see his body. Irakli starts rubbing himself through his jeans, and soon, they both have their cocks out, phones trained down so they can watch each other, so they can pretend. As Irakli gets closer, he loses his grip on his phone for a moment, and the camera flips upward to show his face. That’s what Merab wants to see, Irakli biting his lips and gasping Merab’s name. Merab closes his eyes to keep that picture in his mind. He can almost taste Irakli’s cock, thick and warm in his mouth, as he comes in his own hand.

They make plans to see each other in person. Irakli is technically allowed to travel within the EU, but his lawyer told him to stay in the Czech Republic for at least another year. Merab, on the other hand, has a month of unused vacation time and loads of money saved. At first, he thinks he’ll just take a train, but Prague is farther away from Madrid than it looks on the map, more than 2,000 kilometers. Merab wrings his hands to Mateja about the distance, and she says, “So get a cheap flight. Stay in a weird little hotel. Can I go with you?” She says she has an old school friend who lives in Prague and begs her all the time to visit, and she has vacation days, too. She doesn’t have to add that if something goes wrong, she’ll have his back so he won’t be alone in a strange country.

The airport gives Merab a flashback to his only other trip on an airplane. Before he can worry too much, Mateja asks if flying is scary, because for all her bravado, she’s never been on a plane before. He wonders how she got from Maribor to Madrid - it must have taken days by train or bus. Anyway, he’s the expert in air travel now, and he has no time to feel sick on the flight.

Irakli is waiting for Merab just past the security doors in the Prague airport, flanked by two of his pierced and tattooed gay activist friends (“Tomáš is the one with a car, but Jacek said he had to be the first one to meet you”). While Merab and Irakli are hugging and kissing, Mateja is running toward her friend, Nadja, who has brought along her husband and baby. The whole thrown-together group bonds like long-lost family, especially once Nadja’s husband and Jacek figure out that they come from the same small city in Poland. They all go to dinner together, filling up on beer and starchy Czech food, playing telephone in six languages to carry on a conversation, and taking selfies with the baby. When Merab and Mateja are stuffed and half-asleep from travel, Tomáš drops them off at their weird little hotel. All the buildings in Prague look like castles in a fairy tale.

In the morning, Nadja and her family take Mateja sightseeing. Merab says that’s what he and Irakli are going to do, too, but he knows the only sight he’s going to see is the inside of Irakli’s apartment. Irakli works as the maintenance man for a large, fancy apartment building, and as part of the job, he gets to live there. He’s tried to convince Merab that his place is nothing special, but Merab has caught glimpses of it in video chat. It’s only one room on a low floor with no view, but the high windows let in beautiful streams of light, and the kitchen appliances are new and expensive. And he lives close to the city center, in the middle of everything. “You don’t love it here?” Merab asks.

“Prague, I love,” Irakli says. “This place, I don’t know, I have dreams of so much more. I want to open a dance school, or go to university to become a counselor. As long as I live here, it reminds me that I’m just like my father, working with my hands.”

“It’s not forever, though, is it?” Merab says. “It’s a job for now.”

“That’s easy for you to say when you love your job,” Irakli says.

“I love it almost as much as dancing. Except I’m actually _good_ at cooking.”

Irakli runs his hand down Merab’s face, stopping at his shoulder. “You’re an incredible dancer. When you dance, nobody can stop looking at you.”Irakli was the only person who couldn’t stop looking when Merab danced; to everyone else, he felt invisible. But it doesn’t matter, because Irakli is kissing him. Could they do nothing but kiss for two weeks? Could they give it a try?

Irakli pulls Merab toward his bed. They roll around with their clothes on, kissing and groping. Irakli gets free of him long enough to take off his shirt, revealing a large, unfinished tattoo of a bird on his back. Merab traces a wing with his finger. “It’s a phoenix with rainbow wings,” Irakli explains. 

“It’s beautiful,” Merab says. “I just have lots of stupid little ones.” Irakli takes that as an invitation to a treasure hunt, with Merab undressing along the way so Irakli can find all the tattoos. Irakli stops at the line of Spanish poetry that circles Merab’s left wrist like a bracelet. “It says, _Life isn’t a dream. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!_ I don’t know, I just thought it was pretty when I was drunk.”

Irakli says he likes it while he nuzzles Merab’s wrist. Merab wants to have sex, and at the same time, he doesn’t. The only other time he’s been this nervous about sex was the first time he and Irakli were together. Merab is so much more comfortable in his body now, and more confident in his skills. He wants to express everything to Irakli about how much he loves him and how badly he wants him. But words are better for that. Sex is for fun, and he knows how to have fun. “What do you like to do?” he asks Irakli.

“I want to…” but Irakli can’t finish the sentence, and they both know why. You can’t say _I’m a vers bottom who likes to suck you first_ in Georgian without sounding like you want to kill yourself. Merab grabs his phone, and they take turns typing filthy propositions into the translation app. “It sounds so romantic in Spanish,” Irakli says.

“It sounds very practical in Czech,” Merab replies. “Practical but… kind.”

“So you want to suck me first?” Irakli says. Georgian is a terrible language for dirty talk, but it’s what they have to work with. Merab trails his lips down Irakli’s chest while he unbuckles Irakli’s belt and shoves Irakli’s pants down around his knees. Irakli is hard enough that Merab has to decide between finishing him in his mouth and getting fucked. Merab chooses the latter, because blow jobs are great when you’re drunk and wild with energy, which he knows they’ll be tonight. 

“You want me on my back?” Merab asks.

“I want you with my pants all the way off,” Irakli says with a laugh. When he’s naked, they roll and shift until they’re comfortable, with Merab on his side and Irakli spooned behind him, fumbling on a condom and lubing Merab’s ass with a couple of impatient fingers. He’s inside Merab fast, his chest sliding along Merab’s back as he thrusts. He’s holding Merab’s thighs apart, and his fingertips keep brushing Merab’s balls. Merab wants Irakli to stroke his cock because he wants to come, but no, he wants to just feel Irakli inside him, thick and heavy. Merab clutches at Irakli’s hand, lacing their fingers together, squeezing his own thigh. Irakli comes but doesn’t pull out right away. Instead, he takes Merab’s cock in his hand and finishes Merab off, a surprise that makes Merab yelp with pleasure and makes him come almost instantly. They lie in each other’s arms for what feels like an hour, drinking in each other’s bodies, listening to each other’s breath.

When they’re able to pry themselves out of bed, they shower quickly together and take a walk to get lunch. Irakli won’t tell Merab where they’re going and won’t stop holding his hand. They sit down outside at a cafe, and Irakli orders in brisk Czech without looking at the menu. The waiter and decor look East Asian, and Merab doesn’t want to let Irakli down by telling him that one of his language school friends is a cook in a Chinese restaurant who comes by the back door of Aunt Keti’s restaurant with bags of steamed pork buns in exchange for fresh _khachapuri._

What arrives is nothing like Fang’s Cantonese food. Tall glasses of iced coffee and sweetened condensed milk, the coffee strong and thick enough to stand up to the sugar and creaminess, and sandwiches on pillowy French bread, filled with meat and vegetables, spiciness mingling with pickled sourness and a rich savory flavor when Merab bites into it. “It’s Vietnamese,” Irakli says. “I had no idea what it was until I was dying of the flu and saw they had soup, and I thought, it’s around the corner and cheap. And now I’m here all the time.”

Merab’s mouth is full, so he has a moment to come up with the right thing to say. “Two Georgian boys eating Vietnamese food in Prague. It makes the world seem so much smaller than it is.” 

On the walk back, Merab asks, “So what do we do next?”

“Let’s lie in bed all afternoon,” Irakli says. “And then I’m taking you out dancing all night.”

“No, I mean, after I go back to Madrid. Because I think I belong there, but you belong here. And even so, we belong together.”

“What else can we do but what we’re doing?” Irakli says. “We text, we video chat, maybe once a year we can travel and see each other in person. Like you said before, it’s for now, not forever.”

“You’re right. I’m just miserable when I miss you.” 

They’re at the door to Irakli’s building, and Irakli is fumbling for his keys and his words at the same time. “I want to run away with you. I’m good at running away. But I think this time, we learn to be patient. Because I don’t want to have to chase after you ever again.”

Irakli gets the door open, and Merab bolts through. “You’ll have to catch me on the way to bed,” he teases.

Irakli sprints down the hall, catches up, and grabs Merab in his arms. “You’ll never be able to run away fast enough.”


End file.
